Monday, June 18, 2018

The Impossible Battle against Fake News: The Horse Manure Crisis in London

Sometimes, I have this horrible feeling that the battle against fake news and propaganda is just impossible to win. The latest example is an article appeared on the unnamable WUWT blog, which repeats the story that someone in 1894 "predicted" that 9 feet of horse manure would soon accumulate in the street of London. And, of course, since that didn't happen, we are free forever and ever from any and every possible kind of catastrophe.

Let me repeat it, this is a legend. I wrote that two years ago on the Cassandra blog: nobody ever wrote such a thing on "The Times" nor anywhere else. People keep repeating what they hear from other people and keep thinking that sheer volume means truth. It is pure invention, fake news.

But the WUWT author, Larry Kummer, never states that explicitly. The hurried reader will surely think that the term "but fake" refers not to the existence of the 1894 article, but to its wrong predictions. This is reinforced by the sentence "accurately describing the views of the time." It is hard to think that a non-existing article could be accurate about anything. Slick, indeed.

You would think that people have had enough of propaganda after having been duped so many times on so many issues but, no, propaganda continues to exist and thrive. Actually, it seems to be increasing in volume and importance. Maybe it is part of the way the universe works. Maybe the universe itself has been created as a giant propaganda machine to convince the Gods that the Ragnarok will never come and that Odin will never be eaten by the wolf Fenrir. Who knows? Maybe we are all the dream of a sleeping God who is having a nightmare.

Note: there are hundreds of thousands of Web pages reporting the story of the "Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894" as if it were a historical fact - If there are any which say it is a hoax, they are extremely difficult to find.

Hello! This is Ugo Bardi - I tend to overextend myself on the Web by writing a lot of stuff. Presently, my blog in English is titled "Cassandra's Legacy". In English, I have another blog a little more esoteric, titled Chimeras. The first is dedicated to sustainability, the second to mythology, history, and art. See also my latest book, "The Seneca Effect," Springer 2017.

21 comments:

Pictures of the late 19th show that the streets were indeed clean. In strong contrast with CO2, manure had a real commercial value and there was a strong incentive to gather and use/sell it. All large cities had their intensive market gardening belt and large amounts of manure was critical to their continued productivity.

One of things that are quite intolerable of modern fake news spread out by Official Mass Media in Italy, it is the catholic-comunist propaganda about the need of Puglia's agriculture laborers. Graduates in letters and communication, make fake articles and services for showing that "black men laboreres work as slave in agriculture, and they have poor piece wages because italian people do not want to work in agriculture". So in the catholic-comunist propaganda white italian people made a sort of "apartheid" with black people, and they need to be free and to vote (IUS SOLI).

It's a big intolerable modern fake catholic-comunist propaganda, because they forget that since 1950s agriculture has been mechanized (and in the near term, modern mechanization in agriculture is changing fast in FIRST robotization) so nowdays, into a sane and modern agricolture farm doesn't need of laborers paid by poor piece wages, because there are mechanized stuffs to work in the fields, with less time and more productivity!.

It's quite intolerable that in the XXI century that apulian mafia is maintaining "slaves as Confederate Economy did in 1861 in the Sud of USA" in the modern era of mass and wide agriculture mechanization.

In Puglia was in charge Vendola and Emiliano (left parties) for long time, but they didn't anything to remove "black slaves Confederate Economy 1861 in Puglia" getting in mechanized stuffs for the Puglia's obslete farming sector.

well I think it is hard to find how your comment is relevant for the post. Anyway, despite the 'mechanisation' of modern agriculture there is still everywhere need of manpower in agriculture. From strawberries pickers in Denmark and Holland to vineyard works in France, Italy and Spain. Machines can't do everything in agriculture. 'Black workers' in Puglia do need protection and civil rights. That's not a fake news. Plus, as this blog advocated many times, labour intensive occupation can be a sustainable alternative to CO2 intensive jobs... like mechanised agriculture.

@ Mario Panserabla, bla, bla... you have the right to think what you want :-) but you have to know that History doesn't care about your opinion, or my opinion too.

The direction of jobs History into Agricoltural sector is that: https://ourworldindata.org/employment-in-agriculture

If you don't want to read, you can watch it: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=farming+mechanization+documentary

As I already said, in Puglia was in charge Vendola and Emiliano (left parties) for long time, but they didn't do anything to remove "black slaves for apulian mafia Confederate Economy 1861" and getting in mechanized stuffs for fixing the Puglia's fucking obslete farming sector.

And they did also nothing to adapt apulian productions at climate change, or to put in israelian farming tecniques on using few fresh water, because Puglia is burning lots of fresh water but Mediterranean Area is becoming a dry desert because of climate change.

Nowdays in the I°countries, it's starting the next technology revolution in agricolture sectorhttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=farming+robotization

I perfectly know what it means, and I already know what kind of implications this trend will bring. Quite soon you will have to put robots in the fields, and if you don't put them at work, your production process will be obslete, then your firm will be out of the market, because your firm will not be able to grant quantity, quality, timing, and making profit.

Facts are quite simple:

Nowdays into a sane and modern agricolture farm, there is NO NEED of laborers paid by poor piece wages, because there are more and more mechanized stuffs to work in the fields, having more productivity, with less time.

In the future, there will be less jobs into Agricolture sector.

This means there is no jobs opportunities for "black or white laborers, paid by poor piece wages".

If there is no jobs for italian, there is no jobs for illegal immigrants too.

If there is no jobs, there are no opportunities of integration for illegal immigrants people, so authorities have to close illegal camps, and oust those people because they are not italians, and they have to come back their homes.

In XXI century it's quite intolerable for me, that fucking apulian mafia is maintaining "slaves as Confederate Economy did in 1861 in the South of USA" in the modern era of mass and wide agriculture mechanization!.

and what energy source will feed these robotic peasants? ehehehmy father is from Puglia, he runs a wonderful little farm, without chemical or robots and it's highly productive. You know... a lot of talking about Apulian Mafia can't hide racist ideas. take care!

For the rest of your comment... same old story, especially when catholic-comunist people meet someone who don't agree with them, especially when catholic-comunist people runout of facts and stuffs, they always start to blame the other person for racism and neonazy stuffs and things like that. This conduct it's really boring to me.

On the other hand, for sure you have problem: you are not able to separate signal from noise.

Hi Ugo,I've been your reader since long time and I'm an academic like you. I particularly appreciate the quality of your usual commentators, the quality of their argument and their attitude. I understand you can't control all the comments. But please read carefully this thread and judge who is to block and who has to calm down ;) con affetto Mario

I'm finding equal amounts of poor information in all sectors of the political spectrum. Typically, those who point out flaws about the other side are just astonishingly blind at the antics of their side.

The whole thing with Venesuela being a "failed state" is very biased. Most news we can get in the west about Venezuela i pretty distorted.

Much of the drop in Venezuelan Oil production is, as far as I know, a direct result of US trade embargos. Venezuela is simply having a very hard time getting replacement parts for Oi rigs.

Anyone really interested in some other perspective on Venezuela, there is this counter to John Olivers Venezulea bashing (By Aby Martins Empire Files channel):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fV-C1Ag5sI

Alien, I watched the video you mentioned but was not impressed. For example his undertanding of inflation and price controles seemed to rather confused. John Oliver isn't any more impressive. Reminded more me of watching Johnny Carson than an intelligent exposé.

I think your are being way to sensitive and overly dramatic about the WUWT blog. It did not seem like such a sly deception. They also acknowledge solar as a solution: "(or large improvements to existing sources, such as solar)".

So if fusion energy does not pan put we can plaster a fraction of the Sahara desert with solar panels to power the whole world! Both blogs are not so different in essence.

Ugo Bardi's blog

This blog deals with the future of humankind in view of such things as the overexploitation of natural resourecs and the effects of global warming. It is a bit catastrophistic, I know, but, after all, the ancient prophetess, Cassandra (above in a painting by Evelyn de Morgan) turned out to have been right!

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Listen! for no more the presage of my soul, Bride-like, shall peer from its secluding veil; But as the morning wind blows clear the east,More bright shall blow the wind of prophecy,And I will speak, but in dark speech no more.(Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

The Seneca Effect

The Seneca Effect: is this what our future looks like?

Chimeras: another blog by UB

Another blog by Ugo Bardi; it is dedicated to art, myths, literature, and history with a special attention to ancient monsters and deities.

Rules of the blog

I try to publish at least a post every week, typically on Mondays, but additional posts often appear on different days. Comments are moderated: no insults, no hate, no trolls. You may reproduce my posts as you like, citing the source is appreciated!

About the author

Ugo Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy. He is interested in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy. Contact: ugo.bardi(whirlything)unifi.it